As part of the 2016 Fall Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present a discussion with acclaimed New York puppeteer Theodora Skipitares entitled Puppetry, Performance, and the Scale of Things on Wednesday, September 14 at 7 p.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Storrs Center.

Visual artist, director, and puppeteer Theodora Skipitares has been creating evocative and spectacular works of puppet and object performance for over 25 years. Trained as a sculptor and theater designer, she combined these two art forms to develop such award-winning puppet productions as The Age of Invention, A Harlot’s Progress, Trilogy, and most recently, Six Characters. In her presentation Skipitares will elaborate upon her processes of creation, the interdisciplinary influences on her work, and the dramatic variety of puppets she creates, ranging from the massive to the miniature.

Upcoming 2016 Fall Puppet Forums include:

October 12: The Future of Puppetry at UConn, with Pam Arciero (Sesame Street), Stephen Kaplin (Chinese Theatre Works), and Rob Saunders (Animax Designs), moderated by Bart. P. Roccoberton, Jr.

November 16: Object, Image, Text: The Bread & Puppet Press, with Max Schumann (Printed Matter) and Clare Dolan (Museum of Everyday Life)

December 7: Making Marionette Theater with Frank Ballard, with Steven Brezzo (Opar, Inc.), Fred Thompson (Eugene O’Neill Theater Center), and Steve Abrams (Editor, Puppetry Journal)

Admission to this event is free (donations greatly appreciated!), and refreshments will be served. Come early, and experience our puppet exhibitions, as well as the video resources in our library nook. Visit bimp.uconn.edu or call 860.486.8580 for more information.

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the UConn Puppet Arts Program will present the 2016 UConn Fall Puppet Slam on Saturday, September 17 at 8:00 p.m. in UConn’s Studio Theatre. The UConn Fall Puppet Slam will feature short works by professional puppeteers and performers, including CactusHead Puppets, Lone Wolf Tribe, The Innie Outie Dance Theater Company, and Bryan Papciak as well as new works for puppet and object theater by students from UConn’s School of Fine Arts.

The 2016 UConn Fall Puppet Slam will feature work by an array of renowned Northeast puppet professionals and talented UConn students. From New York City, acclaimed puppeteer Kevin Augustine, who performs as Lone Wolf Tribe, will present Body Concert, a haunting solo piece with exquisitely sculpted foam-rubber puppets influenced by Japanese Butoh dance. Also from New York, UConn Puppet Arts alumna Kali Therrien and Bread & Puppet Theater performer Tom Cunningham, working as The Innie Outie Dance Theater, will present episodes from The Judy Show, a hand-puppet extravaganza re-visiting the classic Punch and Judy tradition. They will also perform their own music as the pop band The Malicious Ones. CactusHead Puppets (UConn graduates Megan and John Regan), from Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley will perform The Dance of the Stoat, a table-top comedy, and Gorlax the Terrible, a comic shadow show about a unintentionally beneficent giant. And Boston-based experimental filmmaker and mixed-media artist Bryan Papciak will present Shadows of the Illuminati, a “paranoid infomercial” about “a mysterious shadowy society that manipulates world events and political figures from behind the scenes.” UConn student performances at the Slam will include Anatar Marmol-Gagné’s performance of a new show about Blue Laws across the United States, and Kimberly Van Aelst’s shadow show Dali’s Moustache.

The UConn Fall Puppet Slam is supported by the Puppet Slam Network. The Puppet Slam movement is a nation-wide flowering of short puppet productions for adult audiences, encouraged by the Puppet Slam Network created by Heather Henson and Marsian De Lellis. UConn Puppet Slams have been taking place since 2008, thanks to the generous support of the Network.

The UConn Fall Puppet Slam is free and open to the public; donations are greatly appreciated. The event will take place in the Studio Theatre located at 820 Bolton Rd, Storrs, CT. For directions to the Studio Theatre, visit crt.uconn.edu/directions/. These performances are recommended for mature audiences. For more information, call the Ballard Institute at (860) 486-8580 or email us at bimp@uconn.edu.

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will once again offer fall community puppet-building workshops with acclaimed Boston puppeteer Sara Peattie, to design and build life-size and over-life-size puppets of Shakespeare characters for the Celebrate Mansfield Parade in downtown Storrs, Connecticut. These free workshops will take place Saturday and Sunday, September 10 and 11 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day at the Ballard Institute workshop space in Storrs Center. Workshop participants will be invited to parade with their puppets as part of the Celebrate Mansfield Parade on Sunday, September 18 at noon (Line-up begins at 11:00 AM at Farrell Field near the Post Office), and then help perform iconic Shakespeare monologues, dialogues, and fight scenes on the Town Square. The Parade is a part of the 13th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival.

As part of university-wide events celebrating the September exhibition of Shakespeare’s First Folio at UConn, this year’s puppet-building workshops will focus on the creation of eminent characters from Shakespeare’s tragedies and comedies. Which Shakespeare characters would you like to see larger than life in downtown Storrs? Romeo and Juliet? Hamlet? Lady Macbeth? Othello? Join us and Sara Peattie to realize your Shakespearean dreams! Published in 1623, the First Folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, and only 235 copies are known today. This year, to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Folger Shakespeare Library is sending a First Folio to every state in the United States, and UConn has been selected as the host site for Connecticut. Join us in September 1-25, 2016 in celebrating the greatest playwright of the English language with this exhibit from the world’s largest Shakespeare collection.

Celebrated in a recent front-page Boston Globe article as “the legendary keeper of one of the Back Bay’s best-kept secrets,” Sara Peattie and her dramatic puppet creations have been central features of community parades and pageants across the United States. Long a mainstay of Boston First Night festivities and the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in New York City, Sara Peattie’s work–through her Boston-based Puppeteers Cooperative company and Puppet Free Library–combines community participation; simple, cheap, and practical puppet-building techniques; and a brilliant design sense to allow community members of all ages to take part in the age-old pleasures of participatory puppet performance in public spaces.

No experience is necessary to participate in these free community puppet-building workshops with Sara Peattie. Minors must be accompanied by an adult. To register for the workshop, contact the Ballard Institute at bimp@uconn.edu or 860.486.8580.

This community puppet project is sponsored by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut and the Mansfield Downtown Partnership, Inc. For more information about the 13^th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival, visit www.downtownstorrsfestival.org.

First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library, is a national travelling exhibition organized by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, to commemorate the 400th anniversary in 2016 of Shakespeare’s death. It is produced in association with the American Library Association and Cincinnati Museum Center. First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library, has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor, and by the support of Google.org, The Lord Browne of Madingley, Vinton and Sigrid Cerf, British Council, Stuart and Mimi Rose, Albert and Shirley Small, and other generous donors. To learn more about the First Folio at UConn, visit www.shakespeare.uconn.edu.

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host its Fall Puppet Performance Series on four Saturdays from September to December 2016, featuring outstanding works for puppet theater by professional puppeteers from across the Northeast and beyond. Each show will be performed twice, at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. All performances will take place at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT. Productions and dates include:

All sales are final — there are no refunds.

As part of its popular Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows for family audiences by UConn Puppet Arts students, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will present Luminary by UConn Puppet Arts MFA student Ana Crăciun-Lambru on Saturday, July 30 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT.

Luminary is the tale of a second chance! When humankind takes the world for granted, Raven, its supreme creator, hides the Sun. His daughter, Little Darkness, sets on a quest to bring back the light to the world. Join a rogue storyteller on a journey of light and shadow, found objects, and empowering adventures!

Ana Crăciun-Lambru is a Romanian puppeteer, actress, and director currently living in the United States. In Romania, she worked as a freelance puppeteer and actress since 2007. Her work included commedia dell’arte and puppet theatre performances, and she collaborated with dancers from the National Bucharest Opera in various contemporary dance productions. In 2013 Ana participated with her group, Uninvented Theatre, in Romania’s Got Talent and brought new ideas to the local puppetry scene. In the United States Ana performed in Goblin Market (Connecticut Repertory Theatre) and in The Puppetmaster of Lodz (UConn Dramatic Arts Department). Other credits include: shadow master for Band of the Black Hand (Connecticut Repertory Theatre), puppeteer for L’enfant et les sortilèges, Noah’s Ark, and Hansel and Gretel (UConn Opera), puppeteer for Puppets Take the Pops (Boston Pops Orchestra), dancer and puppeteer for Gladys-A life of Confinement (Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry), and creator and performer for her Master of Fine Arts project Dust(Connecticut Repertory Theatre).

Ana is a graduate of the I.L. Caragiale Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography in Bucharest, Romania and is currently a MFA degree candidate in the Puppet Arts Graduate Program at the University of Connecticut through a Fulbright Scholarship.

The final Summertime Saturday Puppet Show by UConn Puppet Arts students will be:

August 6 – Superheroes, Villains, and Spaceships, Oh My!–The Return by Anatar Marmol-Gagné and Zach Broome: Anatar Marmol-Gagné & Zach Broome bring you a fantastical tale of intergalactic battles between good and evil.

Admission is $6 for children (12 years and under), $8 for adults.

Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, by phone at 860.486.8580, or online at http://bimp.ticketleap.com/. A surcharge will be added to any purchases made online. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ballard Institute on the day of performance starting at 10 a.m. There will be a limited number of seats. For more information about these performances, call 860.486.8580.

As part of its Moonlight Movies series, the Mansfield Downtown Partnership will offer a free screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Friday, July 29. Activities begin at 7 p.m. and the movie begins at dusk on the Mansfield Town Square.

The Ballard Institute will join in the fun with extended museum hours and a free guided tour at 7 p.m. of our current exhibits, The Bureau of Small Requests: Puppetry and Animation of Laura Heit and The World of Puppetry: From the Collections of the Ballard Institute. Bart. P. Roccoberton, Jr., Director of UConn’s Puppet Arts Program, will talk about the use of puppets in Star Wars: The Force Awakens in a special pre-film presentation entitled “Return of the Puppets” at the Ballard Institute. The discussion is free, open to the public, and begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater.

For more information about this event, visit https://www.downtownstorrs.org/calendar/.

As part of its popular Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows for family audiences by UConn Puppet Arts students, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present Victoria’s Not So Bedtime Story by UConn Puppet Arts MFA students Shane McNeal and Krista Weltner on Saturday, July 23 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT.

In Victoria’s Not So Bedtime Story, two sisters, Victoria and Margaret, don’t always get along, but when the goal is avoiding bedtime, there is no end to what this dynamic duo will do. Come watch several stories unfold, including The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, The Clockmaker and the Elves, and The House That Jack Built.

Shane McNeal, a third-year MFA candidate in the UConn Puppet Arts Program and native of Bristol, CT has been interested in the art of puppetry for well over a decade. Coming from a background in early childhood education, McNeal has always enjoyed entertaining children of all ages with puppets and storytelling. Over the last two years, McNeal has acted as a puppeteer in several projects, including the children’s television pilot of Treeples and in Hartford’s annual performances of Night Fall and Envision Fest. More recently, he performed in ECHO, the UConn Puppet Arts MFA puppet production by Christopher D. Mullens; and assisted with creating, designing, and performing a puppet production with the Boston Pops in this May. McNeal also performed Canteen Tales: Quest for the Golden Spork as part of the 2016 Summertime Saturday Puppet Show Series.

UConn Puppet Arts MFA candidate Krista Weltner was recently seen performing in a UConn Puppet Arts and Boston Pops collaboration called Puppets Take The Pops. She also completed a stop-motion animated short film entitled Partially Compensated, which she presented this past semester in partial completion of her MFA degree. Last summer she performed in Reverse Cascade at the Puppeteers of America National Puppetry Festival and the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

Upcoming Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows by UConn Puppet Arts students include:

July 30 – Luminary by Ana Crăciun-Lambru: Luminary is the tale of a second chance! When humankind takes the world for granted, Raven, its supreme creator, hides the Sun. His daughter, Little Darkness, sets on a quest to bring back the light to the world. Join a rogue storyteller on a journey of light and shadow, found objects and empowering adventures!

August 6 – Superheroes, Villains, and Spaceships, Oh My!–The Return by Anatar Marmol-Gagné and Zach Broome: Anatar Marmol-Gagné & Zach Broome bring you a fantastical tale of intergalactic battles between good and evil.

Admission is $6 for children (12 years and under), $8 for adults.

Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, by phone at 860.486.8580, or online at http://bimp.ticketleap.com/. A surcharge will be added to any purchases made online. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ballard Institute on the day of performance starting at 10 a.m. There will be a limited number of seats. For more information about these performances, call 860.486.8580.

As part of its popular Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows for family audiences by UConn Puppet Arts students, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present The Wonderful World of Wonder by UConn Puppet Arts MFA student Gavin Cummins and Philadelphia-based artist and musician Gwendolyn Rooker on Saturday, July 16 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT.

The Wonderful World of Wonder bridges the gap between the weird and wonderful. Join the water bear on its MacGuffin-fueled international game of hide and seek! Experience a crustacean’s unseeable art gallery by the lake on the bottom of the ocean! Discover how a corpse flower finds love! This show is guaranteed to be educational and entertaining!

During his three years of study at UConn’s Puppet Arts Program, Gavin Cummins has worked as a Graduate Assistant at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. He is delighted to once again be part of the Summertime Saturday Puppet Show series, while also serving as technical assistant for the entire project. He has previously performed George and Martha and The Nature of Nature at the Ballard Institute. Gavin began puppeteering in Seattle, and has presented works as a puppet slam performer across the country, including at La Mama Theater, Puppet Showplace Theater, and the 2013 National Puppet Slam. He is the founder of the Salmagundi Puppet Cabaret at the Ballard Institute and the Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam in Seattle. In 2015 he was named an Emerging Artist at the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Gavin recently presented his MFA production Ok, Love You, Bye as part of the Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s MFA Puppet Arts Festival.

Gwendolyn Rooker is an actor, clown, writer, and musician who holds a Certificate of Training from the Dell‘Arte International School of Physical Theatre. As a volunteer for Clowns Without Borders, Gwen shares laughter with children whose communities are in crisis in Egypt, Sudan, Colombia, Kenya, Haiti, and the U.S. She has worked for Brat Productions as a puppeteer in Haunted Poe, as a sassy singer in Three Chord Fiction, and as Dagoo in Moby Dick Rehearsed. She is one of the Six Lady Dancers for singer Johnny Showcase, has appeared in Shakespeare in Clarke Park’s productions of Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Upcoming Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows by UConn Puppet Arts students include:

July 23 – Victoria’s Not So Bedtime Story by Krista Weltner and Shane McNeal: Two sisters, Victoria and Margaret, don’t always get along, but when the goal is avoiding bedtime, there is no end to what this dynamic duo will do. Come watch several stories unfold, including The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, The Clockmaker and the Elves, and The House That Jack Built.

July 30 – Luminary by Ana Crăciun-Lambru: Luminary is the tale of a second chance! When humankind takes the world for granted, Raven, its supreme creator, hides the Sun. His daughter, Little Darkness, sets on a quest to bring back the light to the world. Join a rogue storyteller on a journey of light and shadow, found objects and empowering adventures!

August 6 – Superheroes, Villains, and Spaceships, Oh My!–The Return by Anatar Marmol-Gagné and Zach Broome: Anatar Marmol-Gagné & Zach Broome bring you a fantastical tale of intergalactic battles between good and evil.

Admission is $6 for children (12 years and under), $8 for adults.

Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, by phone at 860.486.8580, or online at http://bimp.ticketleap.com/. A surcharge will be added to any purchases made online. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ballard Institute on the day of performance starting at 10 a.m. There will be a limited number of seats. For more information about these performances, visit bimp.uconn.edu or call 860.486.8580.

As part of its popular Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows for family audiences by UConn Puppet Arts students, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present Jacks in the Box by UConn Puppet Arts MFA student Mark Blashford on Saturday, July 9 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT.

Jacks in the Box is a one-man puppet show starring the Appalachian folk hero Jack. Two suitcases and an old steamer trunk provide the backdrop for three distinct Jack tales featuring different styles of puppetry. This show for all ages offers a unique opportunity for an audience to be a part of the development process of Blashford’s Master of Fine Arts’ project in puppetry, Jack and Jill, which will use elements of this show and premiere in April 2017.

Upcoming Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows by UConn Puppet Arts students include:

July 16 – The Wonderful World of Wonder by Gavin Cummins: Discover the world of creatures impossible to see, yet who live in this blue marble we call earth. Sea crabs, corpse flowers, and water bears, oh my!

July 23 – Victoria’s Not So Bedtime Story by Krista Weltner and Shane McNeal: Two sisters, Victoria and Margaret, don’t always get along, but when the goal is avoiding bedtime, there is no end to what this dynamic duo will do. Come watch several stories unfold, including The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, The Clockmaker and the Elves, and The House That Jack Built.

July 30 – Luminary by Ana Crăciun-Lambru: Luminary is the tale of a second chance! When humankind takes the world for granted, Raven, its supreme creator, hides the Sun. His daughter, Little Darkness, sets on a quest to bring back the light to the world. Join a rogue storyteller on a journey of light and shadow, found objects and empowering adventures!

August 6 – Superheroes, Villains, and Spaceships, Oh My!–The Return by Anatar Marmol-Gagné and Zach Broome: Anatar Marmol-Gagné & Zach Broome bring you a fantastical tale of intergalactic battles between good and evil.

Admission is $6 for children (12 years and under), $8 for adults.

Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, by phone at 860.486.8580, or online at http://bimp.ticketleap.com/. A surcharge will be added to any purchases made online. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ballard Institute on the day of performance starting at 10 a.m. There will be a limited number of seats. For more information about these performances, call 860.486.8580.